


reunion

by darkmillennium



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fix-It, Gen, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Post-Episode: s15e19 Inherit the Earth, aka me fucking fixing WHATEVER the fuck happened in that episode because i'm angry about it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2020-11-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:42:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27536989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkmillennium/pseuds/darkmillennium
Summary: Adam is gone, and Michael is alone.
Relationships: Michael & Adam Milligan, Michael/Adam Milligan
Comments: 48
Kudos: 246





	reunion

**Author's Note:**

> if this is bad i don't care it's better than whatever bucklemming wrote

Michael winces as the memories of the doppelganger he'd created come flooding back to him, hurt permeating through the threads of what remains of his grace as he's greeted with the image of his Father, for the first time in thousands of years.

He'd tried. And he'd tried and he'd tried and he'd _tried,_ and He had never returned. Had never once deigned to _look_ his way. 

Yet, the minute the Winchesters came calling…

It didn't matter now. Not now, when proof of his Father's apathy had the audacity to barrel into him once more, as His willingness to kill him despite the false pleadings of the doppelganger strikes him at his core like the archangel blade it had shoved into his brother.

It had taken most of his grace to create it. He sat, now, in an abandoned house—abandoned long before the extermination of humanity, which Adam had only truly begun to teach him about. 

Another wave of agony, surprisingly sharper than the cold betrayal of his Father, slams into him at the thought of Adam, torn from him as if he'd never been there at all.

_"Michael? What's going o—"_

_Silence. Unbearable, incurable silence, silence that had infected his mind until he'd nearly gone as mad as he once had amidst the burning agony of the Cage, held together by sheer force of his own will and the unyielding threads of one equally stubborn human soul._

He is weak, now. He'd poured nearly _all_ of his grace into the doppelganger, not knowing or caring how much he spent if it meant that he could provide those damned Winchesters with _some_ sort of opening; a way to truly best his Father once and for all. 

They seemed to be the… _main characters,_ after all. If Michael was to be a throwaway, dirt beneath the heel of his Father's shoes, then so be it. 

He'd long since proven that He cared not for Michael. For Raphael. For Gabriel.

...Even for Lucifer, as much fury still burned inside him at the thought of his brother. He only wishes that he had been there instead of his doppelganger to do the killing. He hadn't infused it with enough grace for a battle—it had been a lucky shot that ended him; but a win was still a win.

And now, he sits. He sits in the abandoned log cabin, surrounded by trees for miles, and he waits.

Michael waits, and he thinks, and he does not believe that he has the capacity to _pray_ any longer—not now, not after what his Father did, not after Heaven was in ruins and his brothers were _dead_ and Adam was _gone_ —but some part of him reaches out for the soul that once rested in the body he was wearing, the _original_ owner, the accompanying tune to the heart that Michael refused to let beat without the warm soul that usually spurred it on.

He reaches for the void, for the empty black inside of him, and he thinks that it might be close enough to praying that it doesn't matter.

 _Kid,_ and his mind keeps spinning, refusing to let him rest even now as grief brings forth tears to the corners of his— _not his, this is not his body_ —eyes. _I don't know where you are. I hope you're okay._

_I'm sorry this happened._

_Come back._

_Come back._

_Come back._

_You're all I have left._

_Please._

They begin to stream down his face, and he can't even bring himself to hate it. He could've held them back, once. He had power, once. The dwindling pool nesting in the crevices of Adam's body is almost enough to make him wish for simpler days, when he ruled over Heaven and had a purpose and did not _grieve_ over _humans._

And yet, he notices it again: his grief for Adam is greater than the grief for his Father.

It is odd. It is odd, and he isn't sure what to do with it except bow his head and take a breath, an action that makes a fresh arrow strike his core when he realizes that Adam had done the same, months ago, whilst remembering the confinement of the Cage.

As the last of the memories run their course through his mind, Michael's head snaps up as he feels a shockwave tear through the earth, rippling and rumbling with energy—a _new_ energy.

Not his Father's, but similar.

Images of the nephilim flash quickly through his mind, and he has only moments for slight dissatisfaction, born of his eons of ruling, to rise to the surface of his grace—a _child?_ They truly expected a _child_ to wield the power of his Father?—before he feels it.

Presences.

 _Presences,_ alighting along the surface of Earth, human and animal and monster alike, reverberating through his senses like they had when he and Adam had breached the surface of the Cage, all-consuming and vivid and _real._

...Perhaps the boy was not so incompetent, after all.

But what's left of his grace swirls and writhes and _roars_ with discontent, aching with a pain he never would have admitted to feeling when he'd led Heaven in his Father's stead with an iron grip.

Look at him now.

Look at him now, tears still streaming down human cheeks, mourning for the loss of one tiny soul that had _still not returned,_ and he cannot even find it in himself to _care._

Until something reforms in front of him, washing the room in a gentle white-blue glow that Michael locks his eyes on, shock burning through him like a sudden wildfire. His mind had gone from a scrawl of colors to white in an instant, blank in a way it shouldn't be and breath he didn't need catching abruptly in the throat that wasn't his.

The soul floats hesitantly in his direction, drawn naturally towards the body of its origin, and Michael's hands rise almost instinctively to cradle it as it comes near, feeling the light and life of _Creation_ emanating from it in a way that awes him, just as the birth of the universe once had.

Slowly, ever so slowly, the soul creeps its way into the expanse of his chest, and Michael gasps as he _feels_ it again—the _intensity_ of human emotion; the _bewilderment,_ the _curiosity,_ the _concern_ that swamps Michael's senses as the soul reaches out for his grace and Michael reaches back in return, twining together in the familiar way that eases the ache, brushes away the cold ice that had formed within him and replaces it with _warmth_ and _heat_ and a softhearted pulsing that he'd grown accustomed to over the course of centuries.

_...Adam?_

_Michael,_ he suddenly receives in return, and he closes his eyes as more tears leak from them, a fresh new batch brought on by the relief that swamps him. _What happened? People were disappearing, right?_

Michael can't respond. He can't. He can't, because he's busying himself with winding his grace thoroughly around the soul of his closest friend, his—

"Well, we definitely weren't here before," a voice mutters, both across from him and not, and Michael pries his eyes open to find that Adam has created an apparition for himself, a trick that Michael vividly remembers teaching him as they'd travelled. "Last I checked, we were in New Orleans. This place looks like a horror movie set."

His eyes are blurred. His eyes are blurred, and he wishes so _ardently_ that he could spare the grace to hold these physical reactions back, that he could choke them down like Adam has tried so hard to do before, but he has to cling to what little he'd left himself; it would take years to regenerate what he'd lost.

And so, when Adam's eyes finish scanning the cabin and instead land on him, _worried_ and _open_ and _empathetic_ and all the things that Michael has never been, will never be, the weakened archangel finds himself following the commands of the body, surging forwards and wrapping his arms around the only true family he still possessed.

"Whoa, hey—" Adam says, though his own arms don't fail to come up and do the same, bracketing lightly across Michael's shoulders in a way that mirrors the distressed worry oozing from him even stronger than before. "Michael, c'mon. What's going on?" 

Michael still doesn't respond, instead allowing his immense relief to transfer from his grace to the small, flickering, _precious_ human soul he's cocooned without inhibition, and he feels how Adam tenses in the cage of his arms at the feeling just as his hands dig a little tighter into the fabric of the jacket they shared.

"Alright," the human says, finally. "Alright."

And he relaxes fully into Michael's hold, the pads of his fingers tracing tiny circles onto the expanse of his back that the archangel would have once considered anything but soothing. 

Now, he thinks it may be his greatest comfort.

"Shit went down?" Adam tries, words muffled as he buries the lower half of his face into Michael's shoulder, and Michael—with his weakened state, his overwhelming respite, the saltwater still leaking from the corners of his eyes—laughs.

"Kid," he murmurs, bringing his hand to rest against the back of his head, feeling the soft head of human hair and reminding himself that Adam is _here._ "You have no idea."

**Author's Note:**

> i'm so fucking pissed! unbelievably fucking pissed! :)
> 
> my tumblr is @adammilligan


End file.
